For consumers, when purchasing a new home or when conducting renovations to an existing home, the ideas and products used to decorate the desired locations can often be very difficult to imagine. Currently, manufacturers of remodeling and construction products will typically only provide a small piece of that product for the consumer to evaluate, with the idea being that the consumer will be able to imagine what the entire finished project will look like with the small piece of product. Examples of such small samples include a small square (perhaps 4 inches by 4 inches) of granite to be used on a countertop, a 2 inch by 2 inch square of a laminate countertop (e.g. Formica®), a few small planks of a wood flooring, a few sample pieces of a tile, or a sample piece of wood that is used for the cabinet.
It is not uncommon to see consumers carrying around these small samples as they shop for other related products. Consumers commonly carry a door (or doors) of cabinetry as they shop for a granite countertop or new flooring, or carry several pieces of tile to the cabinet shop, etc. Not only are these samples difficult to tote around, by many of them can be very heavy (e.g. samples of granite or tile). More importantly, the problem is that most people simply cannot visualize how the final end-product will look in their kitchens or bathrooms (or elsewhere around the home) with these small samples.
When remodeling, the options for the various construction products (e.g. cabinets, flooring, countertops) can be mind-boggling and there are often a large number of products that will change during the remodeling process. If a consumer has conducted their shopping and finally limited their selections to just three alternatives for cabinets, three alternatives for floors, and three alternatives for countertops, then that consumer still has 27 different combinations to evaluate. Trying to figure out what looks best with what can be very difficult, time-consuming, and stressful, leaving many consumers with buyer's remorse after the project is completed. When such a monetary investment is made in this type of project, the consumer must live with what was purchased, like it or not. Again, one primary reason for these problems is due to the fact that current product samples of flooring, cabinetry, counters, backsplashes, etc. are often way too small to compare to the existing home's floor, cabinets, and countertops, which leaves too much for the consumer's imagination.
From the retailers' point of view, they are saddled with the extra work associated with providing samples, and receiving the returned samples. Many times, the samples are provided in the form of sales, which then require credit upon returns. In many instances, the retailer is often required to ship the samples to the prospective consumers, creating more of a burden. Additionally, carrying extra product to be able to provide samples can be problematic. While it is known to print patterns for some construction products on large rolls of materials for creating laminate furniture or floors in the decor paper/foil industry, these large rolls of materials were provided to manufacturers of the finished consumer products (e.g., furniture manufacturers) to develop and assemble the final product. The large rolls of material are not for use by the end consumer. Nor are they provided in a form to the manufacturer that could be used by consumers, as is the case with the present invention. Nor are they provided in a form (e.g., a kit or a consumer-selected custom kit) for permitting end consumers to determine what would look best in their new home or renovation project.
Accordingly, there is a need is for a new type of pre-construction product samples that will allow the consumer to better visualize the end result of a new home construction or remodeling project. Preferably, that new pre-construction product sample is of a low cost and can be easily carried by the consumer. This pre-construction product sample will allow a consumer to feel more secure with his or her decisions, while not spending a lot of money and wasting a lot of time in the process.